As your LSAT prep is well underway for the September 2014 LSAT, I thought I could put your mind at ease and talk a little tangentially about the next big step in your legal career: law school. Soon enough you’ll be a wide-eyed 1L, carrying too many books and squirming under a barrage of rhetorical questions your Civil Procedure professor presents you with. Once you’re done with your first year, you’ll breeze through your next two years. But, some people end up realizing somewhere along this arduous three-year journey that law school may not be for them. You may even see this first hand: the girl sitting in the front of your Contracts class may one day just stop showing up. The guy always playing snake on his laptop in Torts may excuse himself to the bathroom and never be seen again. Or, maybe, you may just find that law school wasn’t what you expected or wanted it to be. Either way, it’s all fine. There are many other routes to professional success! Your dream may just be at the end of a different path.
There are many people throughout the years who have dropped out of law school to become very successful. Let’s go through a few examples, shall we?
- Demetri Martin
Martin is a successful comedian who realized after two years of a full ride at NYU law that a legal career just wasn’t for him. Martin told Believer Magazine that once he found out what he wanted to do with his life, law school was a “waste of time.” - Gabriel García Márquez
In 1950, Márquez dropped out of Columbia law because he had “absolutely no interest in his studies.” He made the decision after reading Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. He said, “I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago.” He went on to be a nobel prize-winning author. - Teddy Roosevelt
Roosevelt decided to go to Columbia Law because he wanted “something to do.” He dropped out after his first year to run for the New York State Assembly. He said he “simply found the study of law to be ‘dull.’” - Diane Sawyer
Sawyer attended her first semester at the University of Louisville and then dropped out to give journalism a try. She’s now the ABC World News anchor.
So, regardless of what path you end up on after your LSAT prep, as long as you stay focused and keep your goals in mind, I think you’ll be just fine. Remember, there are so many different paths to success. Keep up the hard work!
Happy Studying!
